On a glorious Sunday afternoon back in May, an amazing community event was organised at the impressive Paradigm Housing eco development in Greenwood Close.

Dale Hoyland, “Eco Community Advisor” from the United Sustainable Energy Agency (USEA), has been working closely with the residents to encourage a ‘green’ lifestyle to be adopted, in line with the Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 development they live in.

The BBQ was organised through this partnership, and provided a great community building platform, from which other exciting projects were born… One such project was to create a community herb garden. Children of the residents (and their friends) worked together to plant 10 different varieties of herbs in trays until such time that they were strong enough to be planted outdoors.

The residents shared out the seed-trays and have entered into a competition to grow the tallest crop, judging to be held at the next community meeting - I’m thinking that whoever ended up with the mint is at an advantage – this herb is traditionally very fast-growing!

USEA, working in partnership with Paradigm Housing, provided all the required equipment including a marquee, BBQ’s, chairs, table, and gardening tools. The residents organised a collection to pay for food and drink, and came up with innovative games such as volleyball over the bunting as can be seen in the photograph.

The residents were encouraged to come up with future ideas for products, which they would like to see happen at Greenwood Close. Better recycling was identified as one such initiative – this is very important as less waste is therefore sent to landfill, and carbon emissions are saved through re-use instead of using new materials.

Finally, at the next residents meeting, meter-reading cards will be introduced. This is as a result of a suggestion formulated at the initial residents ‘brain-storming’ session, run by both Paradigm Housing and USEA, which was to try to analyse the effectiveness of the project by hopefully showing that residences built to these high eco-standards ultimately cost less to run and save energy as compared to more traditionally build houses.

Not wanting to disturb the residents by going round regularly to collect meter readings for electricity has resulted in very few readings. It is hoped that these meter-reading cards will provide a simple solution, and involves the resident to take their own readings, thus increasing the awareness of energy use within the home.